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Poetry | MFA in Creative Writing - Low Residency | David Biespiel is a contributing writer at The Rumpus, Partisan, American Poetry Review, Politico, New Republic, Slate, Poetry, and The New York Times, among other publications.  He is the author of numerous books of poetry, most recently Charming Gardeners and The Book of Men and Women, which was chosen one of the Best Books of the Year by the Poetry Foundation and received the Stafford/Hall Award for Poetry.  His books of essays include A Long High Whistle: Selected Columns on Poetry and a book on creativity, Every Writer Has a Thousand Faces.  He is a member of the board of directors of the National Book Critics Circle.  Recipient of Lannan, National Endowment for the Arts, and Stegner fellowships, he has taught at Stanford University, University of Maryland, George Washington University, Portland State University, and Wake Forest University, in addition to other colleges and universities.  He is a longtime faculty member in the School of Writing, Literature, and Film at Oregon State University and is the founder of the Attic Institute of Arts and Letters in Portland. Mentor.

Assistant to the Dean | College of Health Professions | howardrm@plu.edu | 253-535-7659 | Rachel Howard is the Senior Administrative Assistant for the College of Health Professions and the Department of Marriage and Family Therapy.

Poetry | MFA in Creative Writing - Low Residency | Jenny Johnson is the author of In Full Velvet (Sarabande Books, 2017).  Her poems have appeared in The New York Times, Troubling the Line: Trans and Genderqueer Poetry and Poetics, Waxwing, and elsewhere.  Her honors include a Whiting Award, a Hodder Fellowship, and an NEA Fellowship.  She has also received awards and scholarships from the Blue Mountain Center, Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and Yaddo.  She is an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at West Virginia University, and she is on the faculty of the Rainier Writing Workshop, Pacific Lutheran University’s low-residency MFA program.

Poetry, Nonfiction | MFA in Creative Writing - Low Residency | Brian Teare, a 2020 Guggenheim Fellow, is the author of seven critically acclaimed books, including Companion Grasses and Doomstead Days, winner of the Four Quartets Prize and a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle, Kingsley Tufts, and Lambda Literary Awards. His most recent publications are a diptych of book-length ekphrastic projects exploring queer abstraction, chronic illness, and collage: the 2022 Nightboat reissue of The Empty Form Goes All the Way to Heaven, and the fall 2023 publication of Poem Bitten by a Man. After over a decade of teaching and writing in the San Francisco Bay Area, and eight years in Philadelphia, he’s now an Associate Professor of Poetry at the University of Virginia.

Nonfiction, Poetry | MFA in Creative Writing - Low Residency | Lia Purpura is the author of eight collections of essays, poems, and translations, most recently, Rough Likeness (essays) and It Shouldn’t Have Been Beautiful (poems).  Her honors include a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship, National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist, National Endowment for the Arts and Fulbright Fellowships, three Pushcart prizes, the Associated Writing Programs Award in Nonfiction, and the Beatrice Hawley, and Ohio State University Press awards in poetry.  Recent work appears in Agni, Field, The Georgia Review, Orion, The New Republic, The New Yorker, The Paris Review, Best American Essays.  She is Writer in Residence at The University of Maryland, Baltimore County, and teaches at writing programs around the country, including, most recently, the Breadloaf Writers’ Conference.  She lives in Baltimore with her family. Mentor.

Professor of Theatre | Theatre & Dance | smithtt@plu.edu | 253-535-7323 | Tom Smith is a playwright, director and improviser.  His plays are published by Samuel French, Playscripts, and YouthPLAYS, among others.  Monologues from his plays appear in five collections of works, and his short plays have been produced internationally.  His work has been enjoyed by audiences in cities across the U.S., including Seattle, Kansas City, San Francisco, and Chicago, as well as in Australia, Belgium, Canada, Germany, Ireland, Latvia, Netherlands, New Zealand, Romania, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom.  Tom is also the author of The Other Blocking: Teaching and Performing Improvisation(Kendall Hunt) and articles and reviews for Theatre Journal, Theatre Topics, The Players Journal, and several resource books.  Tom graduated from Whitman College with a BA in Dramatic Arts and Secondary Education certification, and earned his MFA in Directing from University of Missouri-Kansas City.  He is a proud member of the Dramatist’s Guild and Stage Directors and Choreographers Society. .

Dean of Assessment and Core Curriculum | Office of the Provost | rogers@plu.edu | 253-535-7985 | Scott Rogers was born in the desert and grew up on a farm but will always call the city home.

Professor Emeritus and Faculty Fellow in Humanities | Religion | torvensa@plu.edu | 253-535-8106 | Samuel Torvend teaches courses in the history of early, medieval, and reformation Christianity as well as historical courses on the reform of social welfare, Christian responses to local and global hunger, Christian art and architecture, and Christian rituals.

Associate Professor | School of Business | flickrw@plu.edu | 253-535-7306 | Professor Flick teaches undergraduate and graduate level courses in business law and ethics at Pacific Lutheran University School of Business. Licensed to practice law in California since 1995 and in Washington since 2009, Professor Flick has an undergraduate degree in economics from California State University where he was also a graduate of the University Scholars Program, a juris doctor from Loyola Law School, Los Angeles and a Masters of Business Administration with honors from the University of Southern California.  He also received the mediation and dispute resolution training from the Center for Dialog and Resolution (formerly the Pierce County Center for Dispute Resolution). From 1996 until 2001, Professor Flick served as in-house counsel for a New York Stock Exchange traded mortgage finance company ultimately rising to the level of Senior Counsel responsible for all public company reporting, structured finance and securitization and he also served as the secretary to the Board of Directors.  Professor Flick participated in the drafting and filing of all required disclosures under the Securities Act of 1933 and the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 including Forms 10-K, 10-Q, 8-K and the annual proxy statement.  Professor Flick was part of the management team that was involved in the transactions necessary to recapitalize the business following the credit crises of the late 1990s. From 2001 until 2003, Professor Flick was corporate counsel to a major fashion industry retailer.  In addition to his responsibilities as secretary to the Board of Directors and all public company reporting requirements, Professor Flick played a major role in a trademark financing transaction which was unique at the time.  Professor Flick also was intimately involved in the implementation of the company’s enterprise resource planning system including negotiating the contracts and helping to resolve contractual disputes.  Professor Flick also was part of the team that won a significant victory against a proposed securities class action claim. From 2003 until 2005, Professor Flick was General Counsel of the capital markets division of the largest subprime mortgage company in the United States.  He was responsible for overseeing the legal affairs associated with $10 billion in warehouse financing and over 15 monthly loan sale and securitization transactions.  Professor Flick played a pivotal role in the establishment of one of the first short term commercial paper financing facilities backed by subprime mortgages. From 2005 through 2007, Professor Flick was the Chief Operating Officer of a multi-family and commercial mortgage lender responsible for all non-origination operations as well as legal compliance.  He also was primarily responsible for preparing the company for a successful sale to a bank at an attractive sale price considering economic conditions at the time. Since 2007, Professor Flick has been in private practice both for a large, national law firm working on securitization and structured finance.  Among the transactions on which Professor Flick worked was a unique financing of life settlements.  In his private practice, Professor Flick advises small and medium sized companies as a contract general counsel.  His clients include early stage start-up companies and his largest client has annual revenues of $75 million and over 75 employees. In addition to his professional experience, Professor Flick has taught graduate and undergraduate courses in law, finance, accounting, dispute resolution and other related topics at local for profit institutions and community colleges. Throughout his career, Mr.

Lecturer - Saxophone | Music | steighev@plu.edu | 253-535-7602 | Praised by the Tacoma News Tribune for his “effortless lyricism” as well as his “smooth tone and fluid virtuosity,” saxophonist Erik Steighner has performed with ensembles including the Austin Symphony Orchestra, the Federal Way Symphony, the Northwest Sinfonietta, the Pacific Northwest Ballet Orchestra, the San Antonio Symphony, and Symphony Tacoma.